5 ms·

Ask HN: Are YouTube's demonetization choices ideologically influenced?

• badrabbit 9y ago
  Remember this: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-searches-for-hillary-clinton-yield-favorable-autocomplete-results-report-shows-2016-06-09 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-searches-for-hillar... I doubt anyone can give you a sure answer. But this sort of a thing is a "public secret" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/04/google-influence-hiring-government-officials https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/04/google-in... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-obama-nears-close-of-his-tenure-commitment-to-silicon-valley-is-clear/2015/02/27/3bee8088-bc8e-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-obama-nea... Any of these?: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+cia+post https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+cia+post Notice the term "data provider" (a provider is a willing participant) in this snowden leak slide: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA)#/media/File%3APrism-slide-7.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA)#/media/File... The question really is "what ideology?" Not whether or not everything they do is ideological. Maybe I should slowly put down my tinfoil hat.
• acct1771 9y ago
  Read the article "Google is not what it seems" by Assange.
• kypro 9y ago
  Well Google and YouTube have definitely removed sites and videos on the right/far-right for supposed terms of service violations so there are definitely things they won't let you say on their services that are legal. For example, the racist and far-right site Daily Stormer was removed from Google, and videos which discuss political issues such as immigration are often privatised/removed by Youtube or at the very least, demonetised. From personal experience these removals do seem to effect those on the ideological right more, but I'm not sure I could provide any good data to back that claim up. Although after firing James Damore for ideological disagreements it does seems fairly hard to question whether or not Google might have some internal ideological bias, it's just whether or not that bias is affecting their algorithms. I think Google are quite smart about this though. I don't think demonetisation is a huge issue on it's own, I tend to agree that it's in Google finical interest to demonetise certain content. But what worries me is that Google and YouTube might be promoting content that fits a certain narrative. Google searches and Youtube's trending section do seem to promote content that falls into a specific ideological category. http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method_for_Detecting_Bias_in_Search_Rankings-AIBRT_WP-17-02_6-1-17.pdf http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method... Perhaps this is all completely unintentional, but it does seem to be happening. And with world leaders such as Angela Merkel requesting Zuckerberg do something about ideological wrong-think on Facebook it does seem to suggest there is at least some political pressure being pushed onto companies like Google and Facebook from the outside, regards of the internal politics of the company. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-... I think we'd be naive to believe it doesn't happen at all, but it's how consciously these ideological decisions are made and how much influence governments have over these companies that concerns me.
• krapp 9y ago
  Given the scale at which demonetization seems to be occurring, one would expect the evidence to be obvious: videos espousing an explicit ideological point of view would be demonetized, and those expressing the opposite ideology, or none at all, would not. If you read about and watch content related to the issue you'll likely fail to notice such a pattern. If demonetization were merely about suppressing right-wing content, then why would Google also demonetize let's players, reviewers, vloggers like Hank Green (who would doubtless be considered "left wing"), anime channels, commercial and apolitical channels as well? The proof appears to be disproved by contradiction. It is possible for ideology to affect demonetization, but not in the obvious sense that right-wingers mean (that of Google, being a "liberal" company, simply choosing to harass them.) The motives of advertisers are what is important here, and Google's desperation to make an unprofitable platform profitable and competitive. This is hardly the first time a change in Youtube's algorithm has had major consequences for types of content and revenue - see Ross' video on the future of animation on Youtube[0] for instance... did Google have a political agenda against animated content on Youtube? No, and neither is it likely that Google's current monetization scheme is intended to suppress a particular kind of content as much as any content advertisers might consider unfriendly, which just happens to include content intended to be provocative, anti-establishment or controversial as a set. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? No, at least not as a primary motivating factor. Is there evidence for it? Nothing objective, in my opinion. I would suggest that you do your own research and make up your own mind. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi6FcI2wFrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi6FcI2wFrw
• romanovcode 9y ago
  Yes.
• wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >any ideological bias is only due to it's impact on shareholder value This would be the primary source of ideological demonetization. I'm not quite sure how this would be any less objectionable than developers at GOOG demonetizing content based on their own independent ideologies? In any case, it would seem the latter is negligable compared to the former.